The picture above is going to seem like a strange way for me to welcome you to CircuitBreaks.com. That is pretty much how I spent a large portion of my afternoon last Saturday. In a fender bender. After having a wonderful lunch with my wife Keri at the Radisson Fire Lake Grill restaurant Minneapolis, MN (yes, the same one officer Marge Gunderson ate at in the movie Fargo). Btw, I had an excellent rotisserie lamb sandwich with an amazing curry sauce… ummm. Anyway, we were heading from there to go see a friend who was partaking in a beloved local ice shanty art festival tradition on Medicine lake (the lake is frozen in January). Just as I was passing around a gigantic salt truck (unexpected wintry Minnesota theme going here) and checking my rear view mirror to make sure I was clear, my wife yelled “it’s a!”. Skiiiiiiid POW! Right into a Taxi Cab. Nobody was hurt. It was a slow impact of my front left bumper to his front right. It was so slow that we had time to call the insurance company before we collided. kidding. The Police came, we shared information… the Cab driver and I left the scene ticket free.
You may be wondering if there is a moral to the story at this point? I think there is. It’s a simple one. You never really know what is going to happen to you on any given day. No matter how much you plan. No matter who you are. You could meet the person of your dreams. You may lose a tooth falling down the stairs. You could lose your shirt or hit the lotto. You could win the lotto, meet the person of your dreams, lose a tooth and then get hit by a bus. You’ve heard this all before. With this in mind and since this is my first official post to CircuitBreaks I am trying to keep it open. I don’t know what this thing will turn into. I only hope to have some fun and to discover something new about my friends and myself from time to time. I hope you enjoy what we have going on here and that you choose to stop by often. Here we go…
I recently took a road trip from San Francisco to Portland. I rented a car and declined the renter’s auto insurance because my own personal auto insurance would cover any accidents. After all, what could possible happen? (I realize that I am setting up this situation in a way that the outcome nothing but a predictable for the reader) Half-way through my trip, I find a crack in the windshield. At this point, one distinct idea goes through my head.
What do I do?
I’ve rented cars many times and never has the rental station ever told me what to do in the event of an accident. How could this be possible? Flight attendants tell me what to do in the absolute rare circumstance that I survive a water landing, but a car renters never tell me what to do in the significantly likelier circumstance that something happens to a car.
So I decide to be a man, and have my wife call the rental car company. They take down the information and said they’ll call me back. Now I am anxiously awaiting the outcome.
• How much do I owe?
• Does my insurance really cover cracked rental-car windshields? (If so, how brilliant am I for getting such an insurance policy? If not, how stupid am I for not getting the policy?)
So now I play the waiting game. I am anxiously awaiting a call on my cell-phone from a number that I’ve never seen before to tell me either neutral or bad news. I feel like one of those sitcoms where the character is waiting to hear news from the doctor and someone interprets positive news to be negative (or vice versa). It usually goes like this:
• Character A: The news is positive.
• Character B: That’s terrible, the tests came up positive.
• Character B: No, I mean, you are going to live.
• (INSERT LAUGH TRACK)
Or
• Character A: The news is negative.
• Character B: That’s wonderful, the tests came up negative.
• Character A: No, it means that you are going to die.
• (INSERT ‘TO BE CONTINUED’) (CUT TO COMMERCIAL)